The Australian raven (Corvus coronoides) is a bird native to much of southern and northeastern Australia. Its plumage is all black with glossy upperparts, and its strong legs and feet are grey-black. Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Thomas Horsfield described the bird in 1827, with a species name highlighting its similarity to the carrion crow (C. corone). The preferred habitat is open woodland and transitional zones. It has adapted well to urban environments and is a common city bird in Sydney, Canberra and Perth. An opportunistic feeder, it eats a wide variety of plant and animal material, as well as food waste from urban areas. In eastern Australia its range includes many sheep farms, and it has been blamed for attacking healthy lambs, but very rarely does. The Australian raven is territorial, with pairs breeding between July and September and generally bonding for life. The nest is a bowl-shaped structure of sticks sited high in a tree, or occasionally in a man-made structure. (Full article...)

The Quebec Agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States outlined terms for coordinated scientific development of nuclear energy. It stipulated that the US and UK would pool their resources to develop nuclear weapons, and that neither would use the weapons against another country without mutual consent, or pass information about them to other countries. The agreement merged the British Tube Alloys project with the American Manhattan Project, and created the Combined Policy Committee to control the joint project. It was signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt on 19 August 1943 during World War II, at the Quadrant Conference in Quebec City in Canada. Although Canada was not a signatory, the agreement provided for a Canadian representative on the Combined Policy Committee in view of the country's contribution. On 7 January 1948, the Quebec Agreement was superseded by a provisional agreement allowing for limited sharing of technical information. (Full article...)

Ceratosaurus was a theropoddinosaur in the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago. This genus was first described in 1884 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh based on a nearly complete skeleton discovered in Garden Park, Colorado, in rocks belonging to the Morrison Formation. In 2000 and 2006, a partial specimen from the Lourinhã Formation of Portugal was described, providing evidence for the presence of the genus outside of North America. Ceratosaurus was a predator with deep jaws supporting long, blade-like teeth. It had a prominent, ridge-like horn on the midline of the snout and a pair of horns over the eyes. The forelimbs were very short but remained fully functional, with four-fingered hands. The tail was thick from top to bottom. It shared its habitat with other large theropods including Torvosaurus and Allosaurus. It may have hunted plant-eating dinosaurs or aquatic prey such as fish. The nasal horn was probably used solely for display. (Full article...)

John Rykener was a sex worker who was arrested in December 1394 for performing a sex act in women's clothes with John Britby in the Cheapside area of London. The Lord Mayor questioned him on the offences of prostitution and sodomy; a record of the interrogation was found in the 1990s in the City of London archives. Rykener introduced himself as Eleanor. He told the mayor that he had sex with both men and women, including priests and nuns, and that he had paid sexual encounters in Oxford and near the Tower of London. There is no evidence that he was prosecuted for either crime; prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, and sodomy was pursued in ecclesiastical courts. Rykener has appeared in studies of English social, sexual and gender history and as a character in at least one modern work of popular historical fiction. His story has been adapted for the stage. (Full article...)

The Parliament of 1327 was instrumental in the transfer of the English crown from King Edward II to his first son, Edward III, on 13 January. Edward II had become increasingly unpopular with the English nobility, and by 1325 even his wife Isabella despised him. Toward the end of the year, she took their first son to France, where she joined and probably entered into a relationship with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer, whom her husband had exiled. The following year, they invaded England to depose Edward II, who was soon captured and imprisoned. Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament, which began gathering at the Palace of Westminster on 7 January. The king was accused of offences ranging from the promotion of favourites to the destruction of the church, a betrayal of his coronation oath to the people. An unruly mob may have helped intimidate those attending parliament into agreeing to oust the king. (Full article...)

Wōdejebato is an undersea volcanic mountain with a flat top (a guyot), and probably a shield volcano, in the northern Marshall Islands of the Pacific. Formed of basaltic rocks, it is connected through a 74-kilometre (46 mi) submarine ridge to the smaller Bikini Atoll to its southeast. Named for a sea god of Bikini, Wōdejebato rises 4,420 metres (14,500 ft) above the ocean floor, to within 1,335 metres (4,380 ft) of the surface. It was probably formed by a hotspot in present-day French Polynesia before being shifted by plate tectonics. A volcanic episode in the Late Cretaceous led to the formation of an island and a carbonate platform that disappeared below the sea. A second volcanic episode between 85 and 78.4 million years ago created an island that was eventually eroded, generating an atoll or atoll-like structure that covered the former island with carbonates. The second carbonate platform drowned about 68 million years ago. (Full article...)

Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) is an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Satan is depicted as a goat in moonlit silhouette who preaches to a coven of terrified witches; a young woman in black sits at far right, withdrawn from the others, perhaps in defiance. The mural is one of the fourteen Black Paintings Goya created on the plaster walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo, around 1822. He was in his mid-70s, living alone and suffering mental and physical distress. As in some of his earlier works, in Witches' Sabbath Goya seems to explore themes of aging, death, violence and intimidation. It is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age and as a condemnation of superstitions, such as the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. Some fifty years after Goya's death, the murals were removed from the home by transferring them to canvas supports. Today the paintings are in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. (Full article...)

Thomasomys ucucha is a rodent in the family Cricetidae. Found only in the Cordillera Oriental mountain range of Ecuador (map shown), it is known from forests and grasslands from 3,380 to 3,720 meters (11,090 to 12,200 ft) above sea level. It may share its habitat with seven other species of Thomasomys. First collected in 1903 and formally described as a new species in 2003, T. ucucha most closely resembles the woodland Oldfield mouse, which occurs further to the north. Medium-sized, dark-furred, and long-tailed, T. ucucha can be distinguished from other species of Thomasomys by its large, broad, procumbent upper incisors. Head-and-body length is 94 to 119 mm (3.7 to 4.7 in), and body mass is 24 to 46 grams (0.85 to 1.62 oz). The front part of the skull is flat, short, and broad. The incisive foramina, openings at the front of the palate, are short, and the palate itself is broad and smooth. It is listed as a vulnerable species due to the threat of habitat destruction. (Full article...)

Jane Austen's novels have risen in popularity in recent decades, becoming the subject of intense scholarly study and the centre of a diverse fan culture. Austen, the author of Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), is one of the most widely read novelists in the English language. During her lifetime, her novels brought her little personal fame; like many women writers, she published anonymously. When they were published, her works received few positive reviews. By the mid-19th century, her novels were admired by members of the literary elite, but it was not until the 1940s that Austen was widely accepted in academia as a "great English novelist". The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of scholarship exploring artistic, ideological and historical aspects of her works. The 1940 film Pride and Prejudice was the first of many television and film adaptations. In the 21st century, Austen fandom supports an industry of printed sequels and prequels. (Full article...)

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a sports and party game developed by Sega Sports R&D. Published by Nintendo in Japan and by Sega in other regions, it was released on the Wii in November 2007 and the Nintendo DS handheld in January 2008. It features the two title characters and fourteen others from the Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games, participating in twenty-four events in environments based on the official venues of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, including the Bird's Nest(pictured). Players assume the role of a Nintendo or Sega character, using either the Wii Remote or a stylus and button controls. Critics praised the multiplayer interaction of the Wii game (not offered on the DS) and the variety of events of both versions, but criticized the Wii version for its complexity. Mario & Sonic was awarded "Best Wii game of 2007" at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. It sold over ten million units and started a series of related sports video games to coincide with Olympic events. (Full article...)

The Tottenham outrage of 23 January 1909 was a theft of wages from the Schnurmann rubber factory in Tottenham, North London, followed by a two-hour, six-mile (10 km) police chase. The armed robbers, Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus, killed themselves at the end of the pursuit. The bravery of the police led to the creation of the King's Police Medal, awarded to several of those involved in the pursuit. A joint funeral for the two shooting victims—Police Constable William Tyler and Ralph Joscelyne, a ten-year-old boy—was attended by a crowd of up to half a million mourners, including 2,000 policemen. The deaths exacerbated ill feelings towards immigrants in London, and much of the press coverage was anti-Semitic in nature; Helfeld and Lepidus were Jewish Latvian Socialists. Public sentiment was further inflamed the following year after another criminal act by Latvian immigrants, culminating in the Siege of Sidney Street, in which three policemen were murdered. (Full article...)

ZETA was an early experiment in fusion power research. Built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in England, it was much larger and more powerful than any other fusion machine at that time. It went into operation in August 1957, and by the end of the month was giving off bursts of about a million neutrons per pulse. Measurements suggested temperatures between 1 and 5 million kelvins, hot enough to produce nuclear fusion reactions. Early results were leaked to the press, and front-page headlines announced a breakthrough. Further experiments revealed measurement errors, and the claim of fusion was publicly withdrawn, casting a chill over the entire fusion establishment. The neutrons were later explained as the product of instabilities in the fuel. ZETA went on to have a long experimental lifetime, supporting work in plasma theory and originating more accurate laser-based temperature measurements that supported the tokamak approach a decade later. (Full article...)

The 1956 Winter Olympics was a multi-sport event celebrated in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, from 26 January to 5 February. Cortina, which had originally been awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics, beat out Montreal, Colorado Springs and Lake Placid for the right to host the 1956 Games. The Cortina Games were the first to rely heavily on corporate sponsorship for funding. Thirty-two nations—the largest number of participating Winter Olympic countries to that point—competed in four sports and twenty-four events. The Italian army transported large amounts of snow to cover the alpine skiing courses. Toni Sailer of the Austrian team became the first person to win all three alpine skiing events in a single Olympics. The figure skating competition (pictured) was held outdoors for the last time. These games were the first Winter Olympics televised to a multi-national audience. For the first time at an Olympic Games, the venues were built with television in mind. (Full article...)

Imperator torosus, the brawny bolete, is a fungus in the family Boletaceae. Native to southern Europe, the Caucasus and Israel, it is generally associated with deciduous trees such as hornbeam, oak and beech in warm, dry locales. Although generally rare in Europe, it appears to be relatively common in Hungary. Appearing in summer and autumn on chalky soils, the stocky mushrooms have an ochre cap up to 20 cm (8 in) across, yellow pores on the cap underside, and a wine-red to brown or blackish stalk up to 6–15 cm (2.4–5.9 in) long by 3–6 cm (1.2–2.4 in) wide. The pale yellow flesh changes colour when broken or bruised depending on age; younger mushrooms become reddish, and older ones take on bluish tones. Swedish mycologists Elias Magnus Fries and Christopher Theodor Hök described this species as Boletus torosus in 1835, relying in part on the work of Louis Secretan. Eating raw, or sometimes even cooked, mushrooms of this species leads to vomiting and diarrhea. (Full article...)

The Mascarene grey parakeet (Psittacula bensoni) was a parrot from the Mascarene islands of Mauritius and Réunion in the western Indian Ocean that became extinct by the 1760s. It has been classified as a member of the tribePsittaculini, along with other parrots from the islands. Subfossil bones of this parakeet found on Mauritius were very similar to those of other Mascarene parrots. The subfossils were connected with 17th- and 18th-century descriptions of small grey parrots on Mauritius and Réunion, together with a single illustration published in a journal describing a voyage in 1602. The Mascarene grey parakeets had long tails and were larger than the many green species of the genus Psittacula. They were hunted for their meat, and were considered to be crop pests. Captured individuals would call out to summon a whole flock, a behaviour that may have contributed to their rapid annihilation. Deforestation was also a factor in their extinction. (Full article...)

Ambrose Rookwood (c. 1578 – 31 January 1606) was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant English King James I with a Catholic monarch. Born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits at Flanders, Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He was enlisted into the plot in September 1605 by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot whose impatience with James's treatment of English Catholics had grown so severe that he conspired to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, looking to kill the king and much of the Protestant hierarchy. Rookwood's stable of fine horses was seen as essential for the uprising to succeed. The plan failed when the man left in charge of the gunpowder stored beneath the House of Lords, Guy Fawkes, was discovered there and arrested. After surviving an attack by the Sheriff of Worcestershire, Rookwood was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed. (Full article...)